Joan Jett doesn’t play rock & roll. She is rock & roll.
The onetime Joan Marie Larkin, 60, doesn’t just love rock & roll, as she declared in her breakthrough hit of 1981. She embodies the genre like no one this side of Keith Richards. Which made her Tuesday night Stubb’s set for the SXSW Interactive Bash so cool on a sticky Lone Star evening.
Myles Hendrik, the DJ spinning grooves before the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member and her meat-and-potatoes band, seemed hi-tech in the face of what followed. Then again, his set sounded like someone’s iPod on shuffle, even as he actually matched beats on tracks from the Smiths to AC/DC.
So this night belonged to Jett, who consistently delivers live. She gave us those hits: “I Love Rock & Roll,” “Do You Wanna Touch Me,” “Crimson & Clover,” “Fake Friends,” “Light of Day,” “Bad Reputation.” She also gave us “Cherry Bomb,” a reminder that the native Philly suburbanite began her career as leader of all-girl punk metallurgists the Runaways.
Jett gave the assemblage a couple of surprises in I Love Rock & Roll deep cuts “Love Is Pain” and show opener “Victim of Circumstance,” complete with a rare lead guitar break from the bandleader. As Sly Stone’s “Everyday People” closed the set, Danny & the Juniors’ “Rock & Roll is Here to Stay” already rising on the P.A., Jett and band took a sweaty bow.
They had just played the best show many of us will see this week.
Joan Jett
Tuesday, March 12, 8:30pm, Stubb’sThis article appears in March 8 • 2019.
